H o w i c k & Pa k u r a n g a Profiles, travel, fashion, health and beauty, food, interiors and more VOL 53, NO 13 | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024
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www.times.co.nz LEAD STORY
GROWING ROLL PUTS SCHOOL AT ‘BREAKING POINT’ By CHRIS HARROWELL
FAREWELL HERCULES
Flight Lieutenant Ben Pickering of Botany will co-pilot Hercules frames in the fleet’s final Wānaka outing. Story, p2
DAYLIGHT SAVING ENDS THIS WEEKEND Don’t forget to put your clocks back one hour before you go to bed on Saturday night and check your smoke alarm batteries are working.
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n east Auckland school’s roll is growing so rapidly that its board of trustees has been forced to spend $1.5 million building two extra classrooms and it needs three more. “We’re a bit at breaking point,” Bucklands Beach Intermediate School (BBI) principal Diane Parkinson told the Times. “We’ll have to spend more if the Ministry of Education doesn’t provide the funding.” It’s a problem confronting schools across the country and stems largely from New Zealand’s population growing without successive Governments investing in the necessary infrastructure such as medical facilities, roads and public transport, schools and
housing. Increasing housing intensification in certain areas, including east Auckland, has also led to more people living in the local community. Parkinson has been in contact with the ministry as well as Education Minister Erica Stanford and her predecessor Jan Tinetti, to plead for the funding her school needs to acquire more classrooms. She says ministry officials have visited her school to discuss the issue several times. A roll in the high 700s is comfortable for her school to manage but it’s grown from about 800 pupils in early 2022 to almost 900 in early 2023 and then just over 900 at the start of term one this year, she says.
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